The maintenance backlog story here is what really matters longterm. An aircraft breaking apart midflight isn't just bad luck or combat attrition, it's systematic failure in the logistics chain. When I worked in aerospace adjacent stuff years ago, the rule of thumb was every flight hour needs multiple maintenance hours, and that ratio gets worse as airframes age. Russia's burning through airframe hours way faster than peacetime while also losing maintenance capacity due to sanctions on spare parts. The 40% fleet reduction projection actually seems conservative if they're keeping 50-year-old transports flying past retirement dates. What's wild is this isn't even about new production capacity but just keeping existing birds airwothy.
It’s not entirely clear from the video what happened. It looked like it was in the late stages of a stall, which from high altitude could break apart any aircraft, even a brand new one. I’m not saying that this means maintenance isn’t related, but pilot error is actually the cause of the vast majority of in-air breakups due to stalling placing stresses on the airframe which it was never meant to handle.
A Turkish-operated, American-built C-130 just broke up over Georgia into *three* separate pieces before it hit the ground. While that accident is also under investigation, the way it broke apart also suggests some kind of stall could have been the culprit.
Let’s try to stick to the facts as much as possible here, lest we overreach and look like hacks.
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While Ukraine’s efforts make a safer Europe and NATO too little is done to assist them.
The maintenance backlog story here is what really matters longterm. An aircraft breaking apart midflight isn't just bad luck or combat attrition, it's systematic failure in the logistics chain. When I worked in aerospace adjacent stuff years ago, the rule of thumb was every flight hour needs multiple maintenance hours, and that ratio gets worse as airframes age. Russia's burning through airframe hours way faster than peacetime while also losing maintenance capacity due to sanctions on spare parts. The 40% fleet reduction projection actually seems conservative if they're keeping 50-year-old transports flying past retirement dates. What's wild is this isn't even about new production capacity but just keeping existing birds airwothy.
It’s not entirely clear from the video what happened. It looked like it was in the late stages of a stall, which from high altitude could break apart any aircraft, even a brand new one. I’m not saying that this means maintenance isn’t related, but pilot error is actually the cause of the vast majority of in-air breakups due to stalling placing stresses on the airframe which it was never meant to handle.
A Turkish-operated, American-built C-130 just broke up over Georgia into *three* separate pieces before it hit the ground. While that accident is also under investigation, the way it broke apart also suggests some kind of stall could have been the culprit.
Let’s try to stick to the facts as much as possible here, lest we overreach and look like hacks.